Grief at his Death.—Homage of the Great Men of Germany.—Tribute from Auerbach.—Tributes from his Neighbors at Kennett Square.—Extracts from Addresses.—The Great Memorial Gathering at Boston.—The Great Assembly.—Speeches and Letters.—Address of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.—Henry W. Longfellow’s Poem.—Letters from John G. Whittier, George William Curtis, W. D. Howells, T. B. Aldrich, James T. Fields, Whitelaw Reid, E. P. Whipple.—Tributes from his Near Friends.—Closing Quotations from Mr. Taylor’s Writings. The news of Bayard Taylor’s death called forth universal expressions of regret. The press, secular and religious, mentioned his decease with extended editorial comment upon his useful and honorable life. Public meetings were held to pay tribute to his memory, and the Congress of the United States passed a bill making Mrs. Taylor a gift of seven thousand dollars, as a mark of the nation’s appreciation of Mr. Taylor’s services.
In Germany, memorial services were held, at which the greatest literary men of that empire made addresses, showing their appreciation of Mr. Taylor’s friendship and scholarship. But one of the most touching tributes which Germany has given to the[318] memory of the deceased poet, was uttered by the celebrated Berthold Auerbach, whose books are now found in the libraries of many different nations, and who was for many years the intimate companion of Mr. Taylor. In his address made at Mr. Taylor’s funeral in Berlin, where were gathered a large number of such men as Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, Prof. Lepsius, Paul Lindau, Julius Rodenberg, Prof. Gneist, Dr. Lowe, Count Lehndorff, and numerous government officials, he thus addressed the mourning friends:—
“Here, under flowers which have grown on German soil, rests the perishable encasing wherein for fifty-three years was enshrined the richly-endowed spirit which bore the name of Bayard Taylor. Coming races will name thee who never looked into thy kindly countenance, never grasped thy honest hand, never heard a word from thy mouth. And yet no, the breath of the lips fadeth away, but thy words, thy words of song, will endure. In exhortation to thy surviving dear ones, from the impulse of my heart as thine oldest friend in the Old World, as thou were wont to call me, and as representing German literature, I bid thee now a parting farewell. What thou hast become and art to remain in the empire of mind history will determine. To-day our hearts do quake with grief and sorrow, and yet they are exalted. Thou wert born in the fatherland of Benjamin Franklin, and like him, to thine honor, raised thyself from a state of manual labor to be an apostle of the spirit of purity and freedom, and to be a representative of thy people among an[319] alien nation. No, not in a land of strangers, for thou wert at home among us; thou hast died in the land of Goethe, to whose high spirit thou didst always with devotion turn; thou hast raised him up a monument before thine own people, and wouldst erect him yet another in presence of all men; but that design has disappeared with thee. But thou thyself hast been, and art still, one of them whose coming he announced—a disciple of the universal literature, in the free and boundless air of which the everlasting element in man, scorning the limits of nationality, mounts on bold, adventurous flights and ever on new poetic fancies sunwards soars. In thy very latest work thou didst show thou livedst in that religion which embraces in it all creeds, and in the name of no one separates one from another. Nature gifted thee with grace and strength, with a soul clear and full of chaste enjoyment, with melody and the tuneful voice to search and proclaim the workings of nature in the eternal and unexhausted region of being, as well as to sing the earthly and ever-new joys of married and filial love, of friendship, truth, and patriotism, and the ever higher ascending revelations of the history of man. Born in the New World, travelled in the Old, and oh, so soon torn from the tree of life, thou hast taught thy country the history of the German people, so that they know each other as brothers, and of this let us remain mindful. In tuneful words didst thou for thy people utter the jubilee acclaim of their anniversary. When it returns, and the husks of our souls do lie like this one here, then will the lips of millions yet unborn pronounce the name of Bayard Taylor. May thy memory be blessed.”
[320]
In one of his poems Mr. Taylor wrote, in 1862,—
“Fame won at home is of all fame the best,”
And how gratifying has it been to all of Mr. Taylor’s friends to hear of the memorial gathering held in his native Kennett, where young and old vied with each other to do their townsman honor. With a modesty and sincerity characteristic of the quiet community, they assembled and talked of the virtues and achievements of their deceased neighbor.
One townsman (Edwin Brosius) referred to Mr. Taylor’s life, and in his remarks spoke thus:—
“Locating in Kennett Square about the time he returned from his first visit to Europe, I remember him as a bright, blushing, diffident youth, just entering manhood; and with him I always associate that gentle and beautiful girl, with matchless eyes, who inspired many of his early lyrics, and whose death ‘filled the nest of love with snow.’ He was the pride of the community then, and as years passed on his course was silently watched with a quiet joy, like that a parent feels for a child that seems to follow instinctively the true path. His appointment as Minister to Germany created a feeling that could be silent no longer, and here in this hall we gave him the first ovation. No one thought that when we said ‘Kennett rejoices that the world acknowledges her son,’ that it would so soon be meet to say that Kennett mourns that her son is dead. Yes, mourns with a grief like that which he felt when he wrote ‘Moan, ye wild winds! around the pane.’
[321]
“The weariness that oppressed him while being fêted on every hand, which he thought was only temporary, proved to be the shadow of the coming change. A few more months and a few more warnings, and all was over.
“The strings are silent: who shall dare to wake them;
Though later deeds demand their living powers?
Silent in other lands, what hand shall make them
Leap as of old to shape the songs of ours?”
“Perhaps I have now said enough; but permit me to speak briefly of one, still mentally bright under the weight of fourscore years, the mother of Bayard Taylor, to whom we must be indebted for much of the honor her son has given us. The latent genius of the mother was more fully developed in the son, and guarded, strengthened, and encouraged by her watchful mind, he became all that she could desire. When here at school, I remember how bright I thought she was, and my admiration was not lessened when she called me one of her boys. The voices of two of her sons are now silent in the tomb. One taken when full of hope, in the bloom of youth, while defending his country’s flag. The other in the full fruitage of mature life, bearing many honors, and the pillar of the family, a loss to her which she cannot tell. We may speak or write our grief, but no human pen or tongue can express hers; words cannot tell how nearly the light of hope goes out when such treasures are taken from a mother’s sight and heart.”
Another friend (Wm. B. Preston) contributed a poem, in which two stanzas read as follows:—
[322]
“Though to the learned thy lofty works
Like mighty hosts appear;
The tale of her own neighborhood
Bids Kennett hold the dear.
And Cedarcroft! thy name will shine
Through ages long to come,
With Stratford and with Abbotsford,
The monarch minstrel’s home.”
Another neighbor (William W. Polk) gave an extended sketch of Mr. Taylor’s career, and another neighbor (Edward Swayne) contributed the second poem, opening with,—
“On the margin of the Spree
Rests his body, is it he?
Is it all? or only part?
Questions still my doubting heart.
Traveller! in what realm, elate,
Dost thou read the book of fate?
Poet! in what finer mood
Singest thou infinitude?
Dost thou know the path we tend?
The beginning and the end?
Backward through the twilight past
What evolved us from the vast?
Forward, to what things afar,
We shall mount from star to star?
Canst thou see beyond the brink
What we faintly dare to think?
Though our thoughts are wrung with pain
Yet we question but in vain.
Still no sound the silence breaks,
Not to us the dead awakes.”
[323]
Numerous friends addressed the gathering; there were hymns, quotations, and letters from others, and the whole people exhibited an interest in honoring his memory.
At Boston, Mass., there was held, shortly after Mr. Taylor’s death, one of the most notable gatherings ever seen in America, so spontaneous and universal was the desire to do honor to their deceased countryman. The gathering was in Tremont Temple, and was under the auspices of a literary association known as “The Boston Young Men’s Congress.” The young men studiously avoided any arrangement or announcement which would give the gathering any appearance of display or ceremony, and the friends of Mr. Taylor in that city came together in such numbers, that long before the hour appointed for the opening of the meeting, that great hall was crowded in every part, while immense crowds so choked the entrances that the police were obliged to close the gates and shut out the throng. The great majority of the audience consisted of literary persons and of officials of the State and nation. Russell H. Conwell presided, and opened the exercises by giving a brief sketch of Mr. Taylor’s early life, after which there followed other informal addresses by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes; Richard Frothingham, the historian; A. B. Alcott, the author; J. Boyle O’Reilly, the poet; Hon. J. B. D. Cogswell,[324] the president of the Massachusetts Senate; Curtis Guild, the author; Dr. William M. Cornell, and others. Letters were read from James T. Fields, George William Curtis, W. D. Howells, E. P. Whipple, John G. Whittier, T. B. Aldrich, and regrets for their inability to be present expressed by President Rutherford B. Hayes, Hon. Charles Devens, ex-Governor Henry Howard, of Rhode Island, General B. F. Butler, Richard H. Dana, Sr., W. A. Simmons, W. F. Warren, D. D., Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, Governor Thomas Talbot, of Massachusetts, and many other distinguished men.
The crowning feature of the evening’s exercises consisted in the reading of Longfellow’s poem, “Bayard Taylor,” by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The audience, hushed into almost breathless silence, hung upon Dr. Holmes’s introductory remarks, with a fascination seldom seen, and when that sweet poem was reached, and its reading began, tears were seen in many eyes, so pathetic and solemn was the impression.
The grand chorus of the Boston Mendelssohn Choral union, under the direction of Prof. Stephen A. Emery, of the New England Conservatory of Music, sang in a most artistic and impressive manner some of those charming old German chorals which Mr. Taylor loved so much, and pleased the audience much with its rendition of “Oh, for the wings of a Dove,” with Mr. Wilkie and Miss Fisher as soloists.
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Nothing can show the regard in which Mr. Taylor was held, better than the contributions to that informal gathering, and we cannot do less than preserve some of them for the benefit of posterity, especially as it was that gathering which suggested this book.
Dr. Holmes’s address was nearly as follows:—
“I can hardly ask your attention to the lines which Mr. Longfellow has written, and done me the honor of asking me to read, without a few words of introduction. The poem should have flowed from his own lips in those winning accents too rarely heard in any assembly, and never forgotten by those who have listened to him. But its tenderness and sweetness are such that no imperfection of utterance can quite spoil its harmonies. There are tones in the contralto of our beloved poet’s melodious song that were born with it, and must die with it when its music is silenced.
“A tribute from such a singer would honor the obsequies of the proudest sovereign, would add freshness to the laurels of the mightiest conqueror. But he who this evening has this tribute laid upon his hearse, wore no crown save that which the sisterhood of the Muses wove for him. His victories were all peaceful ones, and there has been no heartache after any of them. His life was a journey through many lands of men, through many realms of knowledge. He left his humble door in boyhood, poor, untrained, unknown, unheralded, unattended. He found himself, once at least, as I well remember his telling me, hungry and well-nigh penniless in the streets of an European city, feasting[326] his eyes at a baker’s window and tightening his girdle in place of a repast. Once more he left his native land, now in the strength of manhood, known and honored throughout the world of letters, the sovereignty of the nation investing him with its mantle of dignity, the laws of civilization surrounding him with the halo of their inviolable sanctity,—the boy who went forth to view the world afoot, now on equal footing with, the potentates and princes who, by right of birth or by the might of intellect, swayed the destinies of great empires.
“He returns to us no more as we remember him, but his career, his example, the truly American story of a grand, cheerful, active, self-developing, self-sustaining life, remains as an enduring inheritance for all coming generations.”
Mr. Longfellow’s poem, as read by Dr. Holmes, was as follows:—
“Bayard Taylor.
“Dead he lay among his books!
The peace of God was in his looks.
As the statues[2] in the gloom,
Watch o’er Maximilian’s tomb,
So those volumes from their shelves
Watched him, silent as themselves.
Ah! his hand will never more
Turn their storied pages o’er;
Never more his lips repeat
Songs of theirs, however sweet.
[327]
Let the lifeless body rest!
He is gone who was its guest.
Gone as travellers haste to leave
An inn, nor tarry until eve.
Traveller! in what realms afar,
In what planet, in what star,
In what vast aerial space,
Shines the light upon thy face?
In what gardens of delight
Rest thy weary feet to-night?
Poet! thou whose latest verse
Was a garland on thy hearse,
Thou hast sung with organ tone
In Deukalion’s life thine own.
On the ruins of the Past
Blooms the perfect flower, at last.
Friend! but yesterday the bells
Rang for thee their loud farewells;
And to-day they toll for thee,
Lying dead beyond the sea;
Lying dead among thy books;
The peace of God in all thy looks.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
We also insert a part of Dr. Wm. M. Cornell’s address:—
[328]
‘Mr. President:—As you have introduced me as ‘The Historian of Pennsylvania,’ or, ‘Penn’s Woods,’ as you know the term means, you will allow me to say something of that good old noble Commonwealth which gave birth to Bayard Taylor, whose recent and sudden demise has called us together. As he was a worthy son of that Quaker land, something about it may be expected of their historian. I know the Quakers have never had much love for Boston, and I do not think they are to blame for it either; for if you had treated me as they were treated in this vicinity, with all the grace given me I don’t think my love for you would superabound. But we will not revive, on this solemn occasion, the bigotry and illiberality of the past, especially as this vast audience, assembled in this old Pilgrim city to honor the memory of a gifted son of Quakerdom, looks very much like ‘bringing forth fruits meet for repentance’ of those deeds of yore.
“Grand old Pennsylvania! the keystone of the nation; for you all know the old proverb, ‘As goes Pennsylvania, so goes the union,—I honor thy name! Thy sons are patriots! The Indian sachem said to the first ‘pale faces’ who came here (understand, I speak as a Pennsylvanian, in accordance with my introduction), ‘This is our ground. We came up right out of this ground, and it is our ground. You came up out of ground away beyond the big waters, and that’s your ground.’
“Bayard Taylor, the poet, the traveller, the biographer, the botanist, the patriot, the plenipotentiary, whom we so justly mourn, came up out of this land. He was a true son[329] of our soil, which has always produced patriots. Think you President Hayes did not know this when he appointed him Minister to that grand old nation, Germany,—the land of Emperor William, and Minister Bismarck,—the most learned in the world? The President did honor to himself by this appointment, and Bayard Taylor did honor to our nation, and is mourned by the whole world.”
Omitting the address of the letters for sake of brevity, we insert several:—
“Dear Sir:—Will you have the kindness to express to the committee of arrangements my deep regret at not being able to attend the meeting at Tremont Temple in honor of Bayard Taylor’s memory. I sail from New York for Europe on the 8th instant. I also regret that the pressure of private matters will not allow me to prepare a tribute to my old friend. You will understand how nearly his death touches me, when I say that it breaks an unclouded intimacy of twenty-four years. If it should be in order, perhaps some one will read the poem which I printed in the New York ‘Tribune’ on Christmas morning. I enclose a copy.
“Yours, very respectfully,
“Thomas Bailey Aldrich.”
To which was attached the following poem:—
“In other years—lost youth’s enchanted years
Seen now and evermore, through blinding tears
And empty longing for what may not be
[330]—
The Desert gave him back to us; the Sea
Yielded him up; the icy Northland strand
Lured him not long, nor that soft German air
He loved could keep him. Ever his own land
Fettered his heart and brought him back again.
What sounds are those of farewell and despair
Blown by the winds across the wintry main?
What unknown way is this that he has gone,
Our Bayard, in such silence, and alone?
What new, strange guest has tempted him once more
To leave us? Vainly standing by the shore
We strain our eyes. But patience ... when the soft
Spring gales are blowing over Cedarcroft,
Whitening the hawthorn; when violets bloom
Among the Brandywine, and overhead
The sky is blue as Italy’s—he will come;
Ay, he will come. I cannot make him dead.”
“Dear Friend:—I am not able to attend the memorial meeting in Tremont Temple on the 10th instant, but my heart responds to any testimonial appreciative of the intellectual achievements and the noble and manly life of Bayard Taylor. More than thirty years have intervened between my first meeting him in the fresh bloom of his youth and hope and honorable ambition, and my last parting with him under the elms of Boston Common after our visit to Richard H. Dana, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of that honored father of American poetry, still living to lament the death of his younger disciple and friend. How much he has accomplished in these years! The most industrious of men, slowly, patiently, under many disadvantages, he built up his splendid reputation. Traveller, editor, novelist, translator,[331] diplomatist, and through all and above all poet, what he was he owed wholly to himself. His native honesty was satisfied with no half tasks. He finished as he went, and always said and did his best.
“It is perhaps too early to assign him his place in American literature. His picturesque books of travel, his Oriental lyrics, his Pennsylvanian idyls, his Centennial ode, the pastoral beauty and Christian sweetness of ‘Lars,’ and the high arguments and rhythmic marvel of ‘Deukalion,’ are sureties of the permanence of his reputation. But at this moment my thoughts dwell rather upon the man than author. The calamity of his death, felt in both hemispheres, is to me and to all who intimately knew and loved him, a heavy personal loss. Under the shadow of this bereavement, in the inner circle of mourning, we sorrow most of all that we shall see his face no more, and long for ‘the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still.’
“Thy friend,
“John G. Whittier.”
“Dear Sir:—I very much regret that I shall not be able to accept the invitation of the Young Men’s Congress for Friday evening of next week. At the same time I wish in heartiest sympathy to unite with them in honoring the memory of Bayard Taylor, whom I not only valued as a man of the highest intellectual qualities, but in whose loss I have to lament a dear friend. I beg you to convey to the committee of arrangements my deep sense of honor done me.
“Very truly yours,
“W. D. Howells.”
[332]
“My Dear Sir:—An illness which confines me to the house will prevent my being present at the meeting of the 19th instant. I regret the circumstance very deeply, as it pains me to be absent on any occasion in which the memory of Bayard Taylor is to be honored.
“Very sincerely yours,
“E. P. Whipple.”
“Gentlemen of the Committee of the Taylor Memorial:—An imperative duty calls me to a distant county of the State on the evening set apart for the meeting at Tremont Temple. But even if I were not obliged to be absent from our city on that night, I doubt if I should have the courage to be present and trust my voice with any words fitting to such an occasion. The departure of my dear Bayard Taylor is so recent, his loss so unexpected, that my lips could only falter out a few broken expressions of individual sorrow, and I should be wholly incapable of any adequate public tribute to his memory. So many years of exceptional and near relationship with him—a brotherly intercourse, unclouded from early manhood onward through his life—would incapacitate me from taking part before an audience assembled to honor his genius and his virtues, and I should probably be able only to stammer through tears an apology for my inability to speak his praises. These tender words by Halleck better convey my meaning:—
‘While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply
That mourns a man like thee.’
“James T. Fields.”
[333]
“Dear Sir:—I am very sorry that my engagements compel me to decline your invitation to attend the meeting in memory of Bayard Taylor. But no one will say any word of praise of his manly and generous character, or of gratitude for his noble example of faithful industry, to which my heart will not respond. I knew him well for nearly thirty years, and when I said good-by to him last May, as he departed, amid universal applause and satisfaction, upon a mission to Germany, he was as frank and simple and earnest as the youth whom I remember long ago. He died in the fulness of his activity and hope; but the death of a man so true and upright leaves us a sorrow wholly unmixed with the wish that his life might have been different, or with regret that it was only a promise. Like the knight-at-arms, whose name he bore, he was a gentle knight of letters, without fear and without reproach, and by those of us who personally knew him well he will be long and tenderly remembered.
“Truly yours,
“George William Curtis.”
“Dear Sir:—Nothing but an imperative engagement elsewhere could keep me from uniting with those friends of my friend—Bayard Taylor—who propose next Friday, in Boston, to commemorate his life and virtues. From our professional association, I could not but know him intimately, and he was one of the few men of distinction with whom every added year of intimacy continued to brighten, not merely your affection, but also your respect. The essential characteristic alike of his life, and his work, was its inherent honesty. He described what he saw; he wrote what he thought; he meant friendship if he gave you his[334] hand. I never knew him to shrink from expressing an opinion, merely because it was unpopular; and, I am sure, he never sought a man merely because the man was powerful. He had an honest pride in what he had done,—a pride that made him eager to share his good fame and fortune with his earliest and humblest friends. He had the genius of hard work. He did many things; he came to do most of them extremely well, and not a few of them easily; but he never undertook any task, however familiar, or however humble, without doing his best. Those who did not know him, have sometimes described him as more German than American; but if these be German qualities, we may well be eager to see them naturalized.
“Quick to the praise of his old Quaker friends, nothing touched him more than the praise of Boston; and to those that prize his memory, nothing now can be more grateful than the sympathetic appreciation of your meeting.
“I am, very respectfully,
“Whitelaw Reid.”
“My Dear Conwell:—I acknowledge the courtesy of your invitation to do myself the honor to take part in honoring my deceased friend,—the late Minister at Berlin.
“I am grieved beyond expression that the necessities of public duty require my leaving so early for Washington, that, in making my arrangements, it is impossible for me to be in town overnight.
“Independent of the public relations of duty, it is well to pause to do honor to one who has so faithfully and well served his country, and his kind. I have the deepest sensibilities[335] of remembrance of Bayard Taylor’s personal kindness to me on many occasions, and especially as his guest, to incite me to be present.
“I am glad that Massachusetts, in the meeting you assemble, will show her appreciation of his character and services, and regret, with more than ordinary emotion, that I am prevented from taking part in it.
“Please represent me as wishing to say and do all that I might in that behalf, and believe me,
“Yours truly,
“Benj. F. Butler.”
Mr. Taylor had been a great favorite at the Century Club, in New York, and a frequent visitor at the Lotus Club of the same city. He was usually accompanied by some one or two of his intimate friends, and at the time Mr. Taylor’s death was announced, several of them who had been known to be his close companions were requested to give to the “Tribune” letters of “reminiscences” for publication. Among these thus hastily collected tributes were several of those which follow. Mr. Richard H. Stoddard said:—
“I have known Mr. Bayard Taylor so long that I hardly know when our acquaintance began. It was at least thirty years ago, during his first year’s residence in New York, after his tour in Europe and the publication of his ‘Views Afoot.’ The occasion of our acquaintance was a magazine which had[336] lately been started here, and which was edited by Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland, one of my earliest and best literary friends. I had contributed to this periodical, which was entitled ‘The union Magazine,’ and on her departure for Europe she recommended me to call upon her young friend, Mr. Taylor, who was to take care of it for her during her absence. She was sure I would like him, for we were Arcades ambo. I called upon him, and liked him, as she had foreseen I would. I found him in the editorial room of the ‘Tribune,’ a dingy, dusty, comfortless den on the same floor with the composing-room, if I remember rightly. He was seated on the hither side of an old ink-stained desk, which was surrounded by a railing, over which newspapers were flung, and was writing rapidly. He looked up when I addressed him and stated my errand—a bright, joyous, handsome man of twenty-five, with a world of animation in his sparkling dark eyes. I have no recollection of what passed between us, except that the poem which was in his hands was accepted, and that we had taken a fancy to each other. I went away feeling happy, for I felt that I had made a friend, and one who could sympathize with me. There were two bonds between us—love of verse, and equality of years. He was the first man of letters who had treated me like one of the craft, and I was grateful to him, as I should have been, for I was weary of the intellectual snobbery I had undergone from others.
“It was not long before we were what Burns calls ‘bosom cronies.’ We used, I remember, to spend our Saturday evenings together, generally at his rooms, which were within[337] a stone’s throw of the ‘Tribune’ office, at a boardinghouse in Warren Street, not far from Broadway. He lived in a sky parlor, which is present before me now, as if I had seen it but an hour ago. I remember just where his table stood, and the little desk upon which he afterward wrote so many books, and upon which he was then writing so many charming poems. I took up the collected edition of his poetical works this afternoon in my library, and turning over the leaves sorrowfully, felt the weight of thirty years roll from me—not lightly, as it would have done a few weeks ago, but with a pain for which I have no words. They were all there, the poems which I remembered so well—‘Ariel in the Cloven Pine’ (which I read in MS. before it saw the light of print), ‘The Metempsychosis of the Pine,’ ‘Mon-da-min’ (which was written years before the ‘Song of Hiawatha’), ‘Kubleh,’and, saddest of all, the solemn dirge beginning ‘Moan, ye wild winds! around the pane.” As I read, I saw the eager face, the glowing eyes, the kindly smile of the enthusiastic young poet, whom the world preferred to consider as a traveller merely, and who knew so many things of which I was profoundly ignorant. My nature is not a reverent one, I fear, but I looked up to Bayard Taylor, and admired his beautiful genius. We read and criticised each other’s verse a good deal too lightly and generously, I have since thought, and talked of the poets whom we were studying. It was his fancy that there was something in his genius which was allied to that of Shelley, and I hoped that I might claim some relationship with Keats, enough at least to make me a ‘poor relation.’ We talked[338] long and late; we smoked mild cigars; and, once in a while when our exchequers were replenished, we indulged in the sweet luxury of stewed oysters, over which we had more talk, of present plans and future renown. I was, I believe, Bayard Taylor’s most intimate friend at this time, and the one with whom he most consorted, though he had, of course, a large literary acquaintance among the young writers of the period, whose name was Legion, and whose works are now forgotten. I have spent many happy nights with my dead friend, but none which were so happy as those. I looked forward to them as young men look forward to holidays which they have planned. I look back upon them as old men look back to their past delights, with pity and regret.
“The world, as I have said, considered Bayard Taylor as a traveller, and it was his pleasure, as well as his profit, during the first years of our friendship, to travel largely in California, in Egypt, in Japan, and elsewhere in the Old World. I read his letters of travel as they appeared in the ‘Tribune,’ and I read these letters again which he collected thus in books............